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Right now, Conservatives generally run into two types — the raving lunatics who clearly state that the world is going to Hell in a hand basket and it is all due to Transexuals or Diversity Training or both. And then there are the intellectuals who hide their lunacy and try to show a reasonable face but who, when all is said and done, are essentially saying the world is going to Hell in a hand basket and it is all due to Transexuals and DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Training. The first group is easy to spot because they make no bones about what they are talking about. The second group is a little more difficult because they couch their lunacy with a lot of multi-syllable words, foreign phrases and references to 19th century philosophical debates that have nothing to do with the subject at hand but diverts readers from the madness of the author’s point. Peter Thiel’s recent speech/article regarding diversity falls into this later type of rant.

Thiel’s erudition is indeed impressive. He went to Stanford where he engaged in great philosophical debates. In the process of his education, he co-authored a book called the Diversity Myth. He says he made some important points there but I am not sure what they are because he fails to review them and assumes that everyone knows what he is talking about. I didn’t. But, if you were to ask me, I think that he is against diversity training of any kind. Most importantly, Thiel made a billion or so making some smart moves in Tech.

Since Thiel is a billionaire, people take him seriously. He tries to be serious in this article and his initial point is worth looking at. He thinks that people are being distracted from the real problems in Academia by focusing on DEI. There is something to be said for that position. Budgets need to be allocated based on highest priorities. The university’s core mission is Education and Research. If DEI is draining limited resources from Education and Research, then, perhaps, the universities should reexamine their priorities. But then Thiel reveals his real worries which is that proponents of DEI are crazy and are destroying university education. He brings up silly classes that have taken root in Academia and the unreasonable rules these administrators are foisting on the schools.

From there, he pivots to how unreasonably expensive the Real Estate market has become in such a short time. Which, yeah, he is right about but how is this relevant to DEI is unclear. How is DEI is affecting the price of real estate? Thiel is not the kind of guy who will let a lack of connection stop him from spreading a good conspiracy theory. He hints that there might be some conspiracy involving bankers and university DEI administrators. At least, I think that it is what he is saying. I’m not sure. It’s all very Washington dark government with enough caution that he could deny any meaning someone has ascribed to him and also be absolutely correct if he likes their interpretation. Are you still with me?

Thiel continues to roll forward with his worries and concerns and even more conspiracy theories. He pivots back to the university. He points to the division of the university — the Humanities and the Sciences. The Humanities, in Thiel’s eyes, is full of crazy people with crazy ideas who have made the Humanities so ridiculous that they are an easy target for conservative critics. But that is not the problem. It is the Sciences that is the better target because the Sciences continue to have some respect within the general public. Conservative critics pretty much leave the Sciences alone because of their strength which is precisely why conservatives should spend some time harping about the Sciences. If conservatives can take down the Sciences, then Humanities and, thus, the university will fall with them. And all will be good with the world.

Where would Thiel attack the Sciences? Thiel believes that scientists within Academia are just scamming for government grants to fund their worthless projects. The science is useless and the scientists are in a massive coverup to hide the uselessness. Again, little evidence is given to back this point. He does point out that a Nobel prize winning scientist believes that in the 50,000 papers on his area of expertise that only about 25 are good. Which sounds about right to me. How many groundbreaking discoveries can there be? I would imagine that most papers would be discussing mundane research topics. Like with most things. There are only so many geniuses around. Someone with an ego like Thiel should already know that. He is just wrong about it. I know this to be a fact because every day I read about new discoveries in science — better cancer treatments, space ships traveling to the far reaches of the solar system and giving the world glimpses of other planets, and a greater understanding of how the body operates and how the earth’s environment works. How could this be if nothing at all is happening in the Sciences?

But let’s get back to DEI. I promise I would like to but I am afraid I am at the mercy of Thiel. He tosses lot of dots into the air, keeps them flying about but he never makes much of an effort to connect them. So, DEI, yeah, well, honestly I don’t have a clue what he is driving at and I read the damn thing twice. I was about to try a third time but I thought Jesus I tried this twice. I am not that dim, he is incoherent. He isn’t going to get any more coherent on a third reading.

Let me end with Thiel’s concluding statement where he completely goes off the rails. Well, not completely, he doesn’t want to shed his seemingly rational front he is working on so, instead, he comes off as confusing. He writes:

“So in conclusion—and this is a simplification, perhaps a distortion, but I think you know what I mean—it would be healthier that, whenever someone mentions DEI, you just think CCP.”

He undermines his own point by saying it is a simplification and perhaps a distortion. So how does this additional information help me help understand what he is saying? If it is a simplification and a distortion maybe Thiel should find a better way of saying it so that it isn’t a simplification and a distortion. Next he assuming I know what DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) mean. I didn’t. Then, I discovered what they did mean and I was even more confused. DEI departments are actually Chinese Communists. WTF. Is he saying that CCP has infiltrated DEI departments in universities to such a degree that the DEI, being an arm of the CCP, is plotting to overthrow of the American government? Or is he saying that the DEI act like the CCP? Either reading seems unsubstantiated from the information Thiel provides.

This seems to be nothing more than a rant with some conspiracy theories gently tossed in so as not to scare away reasonable readers. Yet Thiel ruins it all at the last minute. He couldn’t resist talking crazy It is all good and fine to be critical of universities. Go for it but I thought a tenet of conservative thinking is that reform is better than revolution. Thiel isn’t after reform. No matter how he tries to mute his rant, it is rant – devoid of facts or even a coherent argument, and chockablock full of wild conspiracy theories. It is worrisome that a seemingly rational tech billionaire believes this utter bull shit.

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When hearing stories about swindlers and marks, Americans have a peculiar tendency to be angry at the mark instead of the swindler. The mark is almost as guilty as the swindler for being so gullible. If there weren’t so many dumb marks, swindlers would all be out of business.

This odd belief has created a rather interesting way of looking at business transactions. The basic assumption in business is that the other guy is somehow trying to screw you and you need to be extremely vigilant in order to avoid being taken. People expect salesman to overpromise, overcharge, and avoid talking about problems with the product. Since swindling is a part of the salesperson job description, people aren’t much bothered when they learn that the salesperson they are dealing with is a swindler.

Swindling is part of the American DNA. Swindlers began arriving on these shores pretty much the start. I remember Sister Mira telling the story of the Dutch buying Manhattan from the Indians. It amused her to no end how stupid the Indians were when they sold the island for $24. How could they sell such prime real estate for such a low price? Couldn’t they see that New York would soon become one of the most important cities in the world? The Dutch, on the other hand, were smart businesspeople. Doing what businesspeople do screwing over people to get a better price. The Dutch were smart, the Indians weren’t. There was no shame in underpaying the Indians.

Of course, Manhattan was not the great city it became when the Dutch settled, so the $24 might have been a fair price at the time. That, however, isn’t the story the Sister Mira was telling. She was telling a story about how the Dutch outsmarted the Indians and it was perfectly acceptable business practices to do so. Yes, children, at a Catholic school no less, learning that it is perfectly all right to screw people over in a business transaction. Being fair is not a part of capitalism. If the Indians wanted a fair price it was their responsibility to bone up on Manhattan land values and not for the Dutch to offer a fair price. Deception is just a part of business.

When I moved to California, I learned that my car would not meet California pollution standards. It was an older car. I decided it would be easier to buy a new one in California and sell my old car in Kansas rather than driving an old car half way across the country and upgrading. Since I never sold a car before, I asked for advice from a guy who I knew had experience in buying and selling car. He immediately offered to buy my car, giving me the impression, that, oh shucks, I know you are in hurry to leave, I don’t need the damn thing but let me just take this off your hands so you can leave without worrying about selling your car. I took him up on the deal. Once the title and the check changed hands, he couldn’t wait to tell me how he just screwed me over. The car was worth at least a thousand dollars more than he paid.

I should have known, right? Absolutely I should have known that was why I asked him in the first place. I wasn’t trying to sell him the car, I was trying to learn how. Instead of telling me how, he, knowing I didn’t know what I was doing, offered to buy the car. Then, after the sale, he gives me the lesson that I wanted in the first place. He took advantage of me and felt absolutely no guilt about it. To add salt to the wound, nobody felt the least bit sorry for me. I should have known better.

These stories litter the American Business history. Antique dealers going to garage sales and finding a treasure. They buy the treasure for a song and then earn a fortune on the resell. The antique dealer is admired for his business savvy while the seller is a chump. If the seller doesn’t know what he has that is his own damn fault. The seller got the price he was asking for. There are no moral qualms about it that is just the way Capitalism operates.

Getting a fair price is different from getting a good price. One is laying all your cards on the table and the other is just deceiving someone. Shamelessly deceiving at that. This is particularly annoying when many pro-Capitalist apologists try to argue that Capitalism is the only moral system. I am uncertain what lesson Sister Mira was trying to impart to her class. What I learned, though, was that you don’t have to be fair when working in business. Do whatever you need to do to get the deal done. Be the swindler and not the mark. How this jibes with making me a good Catholic, which I mistakenly believed was Sister Mira’s primary responsibility, is beyond me.

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The recent coronation of Charles III got me thinking about tradition. Charles became king because, somewhere in the distant past, one of his relatives climbed to the top of the greasy pole. Now, because of his family’s good fortune, he gets to become king. It has nothing to do with his talent or ability to do the job. Tradition made him king because members of his family have set on the throne and he is the oldest in his family. Tradition, for some reason, must be honored.

Even though tradition has very little bearing any longer on the monarch’s actual role in the modern UK. Traditionally, the king once held great power. It was so important that the coronation was a religious ceremony performed in a church. The king’s role came from God Almighty and not the people he ruled. This is no longer true. The King has very limited power. The government is installed through a democratic process in which the monarch can’t even participate. As for the religious aspect of the coronation, it is doubtful that in a country where over 50% of the population never attends church services that any British citizen actually believes that God has invested the new king with any power what so ever.

To summarize then, a church that has a very tenuous allegiance of UK population installs a king who has no real power in a modern democratic country because of tradition. Charles comes to church one day to have an archbishop plop a crown on his head and walks aways with billions of pounds and real estate and little else.

It connects the British people to their past. Really? Whose past? Certainly not the average UK citizen. The past for most citizens had little to do with the petty squabbles of the nobility. The history of the monarchs is all very fun and interesting but meaningless to the actual history of the British people. Indeed, the tradition that might be remembered with more relevance is the constant battles of the average citizen wresting power away from a resistant nobility.

But, tradition, it is important to keep up with the old traditions. Why? What would happen if the monarch disappeared over night? Would the lives of the average British person change much? Look I don’t actually care about Charles being King. If the British people want a king, let them have one. What bothers me is this slavish devotion to meaningless tradition. Why call a person a king when he really isn’t a King? Why say he is blessed by God when a great number of people don’t actually believe it anymore. Because of tradition?

Perhaps a better example of this is the continued celebration of Christmas and Easter for people who have long ago abandoned traditional Christianity. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas trees and presents and chocolate treats as much as the next person but the connection to Christianity has been severed. A lot of people, including myself, continue to celebrate these holidays because well it is traditional. Is that really a good reason to do something you no longer believe in?

When all you got is tradition, it is time to rethink what you are doing.

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Imagine being caught smuggling Fruit Roll Ups

Would you even go to prison for this? I assuming the smuggling is the issue but throwing the book at someone caught selling fruit roll ups for such a penny-ante crime seems a bit harsh. And if you did manage to send these smugglers to prison, what would the other prisoners think? Is there any cache to be a fruit roll up smuggler?

Why are fruit roll ups so expensive in Israel? This a pretty bizarre shortage. I mean can’t some candy store just import more fruit roll ups if there is a shortage? And how many fruit roll ups can you bring into Israel before it is smuggling. I imagine a family of four going to Israel with a hundred fruit roll ups each for a 2-week trip. That doesn’t seem like a lot of fruit roll ups really but what would Israeli customs say?

Finally this seems to me to have the makings of a great television crime drama with rival gangs vying for control of the fruit roll up territories of Tel Aviv.

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Conservative columnist Heather MacDonald recently bemoaned the mentally ill people roaming the streets of our city. She describes the failure of civil institutions to protect regular people from these people. Texas Republican Governor Abbott thinks that better mental health care is the solution to mass casualty shootings plaguing his state. Mental Health is the solution to these twin social ills the country is facing.

Better Mental Health certainly would help. The problem is what exactly are the solutions these Mental Health critics offering to meet these problems. Where will these mentally ill people be housed? Who will pay for their housing and medical care? How will their legal rights be protected? How do we identify the mentally ill? What will be the standard for involuntary institutionalization? These all call for the expansion of government oversight and infrastructure. They also all cost money.

How does this happen given the Conservative and Republican distaste for government regulation and taxes? Would they support an increase in taxes to insure that the mentally ill had suitable housing and healthcare? Would they support the psychological testing of gun buyers to determine if they have violent psychological problems? If protecting citizens is the goal, how much money are they willing to spend to achieve this goal? How do they propose protecting citizens from the criminally insane without a massive expansion of mental health and judicial systems? Prisons are not mental health clinics, putting the criminally insane into prisons

It is all well and good to point the finger at the mental health crisis but what are the mental health solutions? There are a lot of unanswered questions. Until these critics provide proposals to address these questions, their criticism is just loud noise to distract from the emptiness of their vision. They have absolutely nothing to offer that will solve these problems.

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We are all sinners. This is one Christian teaching I have admired as it humbles, or it should humble, Christians when they are tempted to judge other people. Pope, Prince and Pauper — we are all sinners. It is the great equalizer. Christians would be wise to keep this teaching in mind instead of throwing their moral superiority around to influence public thinking. Unfortunately they rarely do. Instead they divide the world into two camps — Christians and everybody else. Moral people versus heathens. This type of American Christian enjoys pointing out everyone else sins and, because heathens continue to sin, these Christians are committed to making sinners lives as miserable as possible.

This divisive thinking among American Christians can be seen on a daily basis but a particularly vivid example of it occurred the other in the Florida Legislature. Republicans there passed a law saying that they don’t have to treat anyone if they disagree with them on moral grounds. The intention, as I understand it, is to enable doctors to refuse treatment of patients who they find morally dubious.

I am confused because aren’t these same Republicans and Christians complaining about cancel culture. They want to be able to be disagree on subjects like transgender treatment for children without fear of retribution from trans activists who would view this as transphobic. Since their stated goal is an open society where anyone can speak their mind freely without fear, its particularly annoying that whenever they get control of a legislature they try to cancel the groups that fails their morality tests. A morality test that is pretty much focused on people Christians view as sexually deviant. They aren’t complaining about treating robbers, rapists, adulterers and con men. Their focus is on doctors being forced to treat gay and trans people.

I didn’t know they were being forced to now. This is the first I heard of it. I would think if this is a widespread problem that the outrage machine at Fox News would have spread the news far and wide. Are any doctors in Florida complaining about being forced to take on Drag Queens and Trans patients? Don’t doctors have a pretty easy way of taking on patients they approve of without making much of a scene. If I call a doctor for an appointment and the receptionist catches my gay lisp, they can just say the doctor isn’t taking new patients and I wouldn’t be the least bit suspicious to hear that. It happens all the time. There is no need to get into a conversation about morality much less a law suit. As with many issues that the Republican Party take on, this isn’t a problem. It is a show tune song to please their constituents and not because there is a problem. Florida Republicans have made a mountain out of no hill. It does give the illusion of movement and that is all these legislators want.

Another big problem with this startling ill-considered law is it is so broadly written that non-Christians can use it too. This will be its undoing. What is to stop a Gay Doctor from saying I believe that Christian Republicans are evil and I refuse to take them on as patients. What happens if there is a mass casualty event and the police bring in the wounded gunman, can a doctor decline to treat him because he disapproves of murder? Would Emergency Rooms across Florida have to staff a cross section of faiths, sexual identities and political persuasions to accommodate all the different political and religious passions that inspire disapproval? Where exactly does this end?

What we have here is a solution to something that isn’t even a problem. Nothing will change. Doctors will carry on doing what doctors do without having any patients forced on them. Nobody will see the difference because nothing needed to change. There will be legal battles because, of course, this is what it is all about. Republicans want somebody to challenge this law so they can point how unreasonable their political opponents are because, of course, some Trans Activists will take the bait and bring suit.

It is a lot of fuss for nothing. Most doctors will treat any patient they have without question. If a person wants a gender reassignment, I am pretty certain that most Christian doctors aren’t experts in that particular field and will have to refer them to another doctor any way. Most gay people want a doctor they feel they can talk freely to and will choose someone who is sympathetic to them.

If there is a problem then I suggest these Christian doctors remember the teaching that we are all sinners. Every patient that a doctor treats has sinned and is going to continue sinning every day for the rest of their lives. They will sin because they are human. In the mean time, a body is a body. If you have the power to make someone feel better why not do it? What would Jesus do?

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Why are so many men willing to kill complete strangers? It makes no sense to me. I can understand wanting to kill someone I know. If someone I know has betrayed me and this has enraged me. I could see how it might get out of hand and I might kill the person. And I can also understand killing someone who harmed somebody I loved. This person wronged me by harming someone I love and, in a moment of insanity, I reacted violently. It’s not something I approve of but I can understand it happening. Emotions sometimes get the better of people.

Killing strangers, on the other hand, is incomprehensible to me. The murderer wants to kill somebody and anybody will do. Why would anyone kill strangers who have done nothing to hurt me?

So I was disturbed when I read that Jake Teixeira, the guardsman accused of leaking classified documents, wanted to kill a ton of people. Why does anyone want to kill a ton of strangers? It is baffling. Yet, there appears to be a number of people who fall into this madness. Guns are a problem but they are just part of a bigger problem. What makes a person pull the trigger on a room full of kindergartners? Why would anyone set up a gun in a hotel room to kill people attending a concert below? What satisfaction can come from that?

It is troubling because there is nothing that can explain it. There are so many easy answers — violent video games and movies, the absence of religion in people’s lives, a nihilistic mind where nothing matters to the killer, an absent father in a boy’s life and untreated mental illness are all on the list but none so definitively as to be the key. As often happens when there is no rational explanation, this leaves the supernatural. Evil is the only thing that can answer it for me which is more troubling than any other answer.

I don’t like this answer. It seems like a cop out. It is irrational. I can’t tell you why something happened, so evil is the answer. Evil is elusive and frightening because it is inexplicable. Does it just take a hold of a person? Fill the mind with hatred and blood lust? And then carnage? What is that like and, most worrisome, can it happen to me? If I can’t explain or understand evil then how can I avoid evil? I don’t even know what evil looks like until it happens and when it does it looks a lot like anyone else I met on the streets. I won’t know evil until it opens fire on me. Could I be possessed by this evil? Evil isn’t the answer but it is the only one I got until something better comes along. I just don’t believe it is the answer.

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So Elon Musk has lost between 180 billion and 200 billion dollars. That is a lot of money. I thought the assumption regarding billionaires is that they are good with money and will spend it wisely so that their money will trickle down to the rest of us. Musk bought Twitter and exploding rockets. The Twitter sale is particularly interesting because almost as soon as he bought it, he decided he didn’t want it and did everything he could to undermine the deal. Unfortunately for Musk, he screwed up and is now stuck with Twitter. Then there is the exploding rocket, another good investment although we are told by Musk supporters that an exploding rocket is actually a good investment because we learned something about what we can and can not do. Maybe but I think NASA has been sending rockets into space for some time without mishaps, so perhaps a little consultation with them NASA before the next experiment is in order.

Given all of these expensive mishaps with their money, you think that I would be used to feckless billionaires by now but Rupert Murdoch’s pay out to Dominion of 787.5 million is another shocking example. Dominion was rightly irritated with Fox News for suggesting their voting machines were fraudulent. Fox News had ample evidence that this was incorrect however management decided that their audience didn’t want to hear the truth and that if they were told the truth they would get so upset that they would stop watching Fox News, so they decided to continue spreading the false news or, as we used to call it back in the good old days, lying. Dominion, especially after proving that Fox News was spreading a lie and knowingly continued to spread the lie, filed suit.

After a brutal onslaught of evidence proved all this malfeasance, Fox decided to settle with Dominion for nearly a cool 800 million dollars. Money, I would say, that was ill spent but OK anybody can make mistakes even a man who was born into a newspaper family and worked in publishing since the 1950’s, I don’t know, I suppose he could be unfamiliar with the idea that you can’t knowingly lie in your publications. Definitely an easy mistake for such a seasoned professional. Completely understandable.

Except this isn’t a one time error, there are future law suits. Murdoch even recently paid off Prince William. The idea, as I understood penalties and pay offs, is that the guilty party pays stiff penalties in order to teach them a lesson. But Murdoch apparently has so much money that he doesn’t have to worry about shelling out all of this money and, so as an extra added bonus, he doesn’t have to learn a lesson either. To make matters worse, these settlements are tax deductible as a business expense so speculation is that after Murdoch takes these deductions, he will recoup some of the 787.5 million. Imagine that, the American tax payer is actually paying part of Murdoch’s settlement.

It irritates me that billionaires get off the hook this way. The conservative press is always quick to point out welfare fraud when some poor wretch buys cigarettes and alcohol instead of using his welfare money on broccoli and carrots. You see, they say, the poor can’t be trusted with more money but nobody raises much of a fuss when a billionaire gets caught rigging the system. Murdoch needs to stop lying. How will he ever learn his lesson if we keep letting get away with it. Personally, I would much rather give 787.5 million to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the most unworthy gin drinking, cigarette smoking, Cadillac driving bums than for Murdoch to go unpunished. At least the poor frauds will pump money into the economy by spreading the money around to local businesses instead of paying off princes, ex-wives and coverup legal settlements.

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Heather MacDonald worries that Black on Black crime is the real problem plaguing the Black community and not a racist cop problem. That Black on Black crime problem is rooted in the racist cop problem eludes her. She thinks it is simply a matter of the Black community behaving better and all will be taken care of. She offers nothing in the way of tangible ways to make this happen and, because she ignores the racists cop part of the problem, her idea is doomed to failure even if she could trouble herself to make a tangible recommendation to address Black on Black crime.

MacDonald sees the problem quite narrowly — Blacks are committing too many crimes against other Blacks. Blacks need to stop worrying about bad cops and do something about their criminal youth then there would be no problem at all. But crime has been with us since humans began living together. It isn’t going to stop. Say a stranger attacks me on the street. I will certainly be pissed off about it and want something done. Now, if that person is a cop, I am going to be pretty damn upset about it. I just don’t expect much from my neighbors. They are strangers and I they can be half crazy for all I know. I do, however, expect cops to be helpful. I don’t expect them to attack me. They are public servants paid, in part, with my taxes. The worst I, as a white person, expect from a cop is that the crime will remain unsolved and I will never hear from them again. Some Blacks fear a different reaction from the police and that is a problem. A problem that impacts all crime in a Black neighborhood.

This doesn’t mean Blacks like their neighbors committing crimes against them or that they don’t see this as a problem. They may, however, have different concerns about the police. They may worry that the police will somehow entangle them in a bigger problem, or that the cops might overreact to what happened and, instead of solving the problem, they may kill someone or send someone to the hospital. They might weigh their decision about whether to involve the cops. Is this going to be worth any trouble I get from the police. This is an impediment to crime control. It also makes the police peculiarly ineffective in handling crime in Black neighborhoods. How can police solve crimes when the people they are serving mistrust them so much that they are circumspect in their interactions with the police? MacDonald never addresses this.

But she does point out that Black criminals are more dangerous to Blacks than the police. I don’t think anybody would argue with that. Criminals are more dangerous than the police. The problem here is that the police aren’t supposed to be dangerous. Fear of the cops is not an issue for MacDonald. For MacDonald, the data should convince Blacks about that, why should any other effort be made when the numbers prove her point. But, even if you assume the numbers are right and MacDonald is correct about Black on Black crime, it doesn’t really matter. Perception is everything. If the Black community believes Racism is still a problem then it is still a problem and the police need to change that perception. The burden for change rests firmly with the cops. Present day cops are paying the price for the racist behavior of their predecessors. It’s not fair to them but it is up to the present day cops to change this perception.

I also would argue that MacDonald is wrong about police racism being inconsequential and all in the Black community’s mind. Here is a sample of police racism which might explain this fear: the Central Park rape trial of innocent blacks, the drug arrests of innocent Blacks in Tulia Texas, George Floyd who died in police custody over a bad check, Tamir Rice, a twelve year old boy with a toy gun, who was shot and killed seconds after the police arrived — a grand jury decided not to take case to trial, John Crawford III who was shot holding a BB gun in a Walmart — a grand jury decided not to prosecute, an all white jury finding a white policeman not guilty of shooting of an unarmed black man, a white Louisiana judge using the N word, an Illinois cop fired for his racist posts, six Georgia policeman caught using the N word, a Mississippi police chief caught bragging about killing a black person, and just recently an Oklahoma sheriff was caught on tape talking about lynching black people. Why would Black people think they could be treated fairly when their daily personal experiences tell them differently? Why would Black people work with the police to stop crime in their neighborhoods when they are suspicious that these efforts might be used against them or their kids?

Black on Black crime is a problem but it isn’t “the” problem. Blacks have plenty of reasons to mistrust the police. MacDonald telling them this no longer is a problem in 21st Century America isn’t going to change many minds because Black people have a history with hundreds of years of police racism. Those feelings don’t just disappear overnight. In order to fight crime, Black people need to have confidence in the police. A lot of them don’t. Until then, MacDonalds complaint about Black on Black crime is an impotent response to a difficult and complicated problem and therefore meaningless.

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For all the talk from the right about Tucker Carlson fighting the good fight and taking it to the awful liberals, three things have become abundantly clear. He is dumb. We know he is dumb because he used hateful and derogatory phrases to describe people while using his company’s internet. Anyone who has worked in a major company in the past 25 years knows this is stupid. The company, if he paid any attention to his HR training, owns the system and the correspondence therefore the company has the right to read your emails. Also, once you have sent an email, you have lost all control over who that person will forward that email to. So, in order to protect yourself, it is best to refrain from trash talking your colleagues. Carlson might have skipped the HR training on the proper handling of electronic information but he surely must have known of the dangers of email. Yet, he still blithely went ahead with his disparaging emails. How can you explain such negligence other than stupidity on a rather grand scale.

Tucker Carlson is also just over the top mean. He uses the C word to describe Sidney Powell. He hates Donald Trump. Both Trump and Powell are Carlson allies. He uses the C word again to describe another work colleague. Surprisingly Powell and Trump are supposed to be political allies of Carlson so these aren’t passionate responses where he got carried away attacking his political enemies. These are friends and colleagues. Yet he has nothing but disdain for them. That he is so mean to his supposed friends reveals a duplicitous nature. He supports Powell and Trump on the air but behind their back he disparages them. Since Powell and Trump were making outrageous claims it could have been helpful for a person on the right to say that they were wrong. First because that is the way he truly feels, he should tell his audience his true feelings and not hide behind the agenda he hopes to create. This way they have a better understanding of his thoughts and these people. It also calls into question what his true feelings are. He tries to come off as a fire breathing right wing Republican but, in private, he takes a more moderate position. Which leads to the question, what are his actual position since he gives different opinions during the day time from the ones he expresses on the air?

With all of this verifiable evidence about Tucker Carlson, it is some what amazing that he still has supporters on the right. He isn’t very bright, or nice, and he is obfuscating his actual positions on issues. But, yeah, it is good to have a true believer on board.